Blakeney

The world is finally beginning to appear.

Over the last night and today, most of the work on Blakeney has been about the environment.

Until now, a lot of the Unreal project has understandably felt like a technical test. We have been getting the basic world, scale and geography working and proving that we can actually build this thing. Now it is beginning to turn into somewhere recognisable.

The quay at Morston in the Unreal prototype, looking along the railings towards a small orange building

The main focus has been the Morston end of the harbour and the route towards the Pit and Blakeney Creek. We have been working on the shape and scale of the harbour, the creeks and channels, the mud and water areas, and the relationship between the different parts of the landscape.

The Athill pontoons at Morston have also become an important reference point. Rather than creating a generic sailing environment, the intention is to put the real features of the harbour in roughly the right places and at believable distances from one another.

The lookout building at Morston in the Unreal prototype, with dinghies, picnic tables and houses beyond
The lookout, the dinghies, the picnic tables.

That sounds fairly simple, but it makes an enormous difference. Blakeney Harbour is a strange landscape. Most of it is incredibly flat, the navigable water is often only a narrow ribbon through huge areas of mud and marsh, and the sense of scale comes from small things such as pontoons, boats, buoys, banks and distant buildings.

We are now starting to build around those characteristics rather than simply making “a harbour”.

A blue boathouse on the Point in the Unreal prototype, dunes and water beyond
The boathouse on the Point. Small buildings, huge emptiness.

Blender is being used alongside Unreal Engine to help create the geography and assets, while Unreal is becoming the place where everything comes together with the water, lighting and eventually the sailing itself.

There is still a lot that is crude or temporary, but this feels like an important point in the build. For the first time we are beginning to move away from an empty Unreal landscape towards something that might eventually feel unmistakably like Blakeney Harbour.

Sunset over Blakeney Harbour in the Unreal prototype, boats lying to their anchors
Lighting beginning to do some of the work.

The next stage is where it should become much more interesting: proper mud and water, more of the pontoons and harbour furniture, buoys and boats, and then the environmental systems that will really make the place work as a sailing game.

The aim isn't just to make a pretty model of Blakeney.

It is to make a harbour that changes, where tide exposes the mud, channels matter, boats ground if you get it wrong, and wind and weather change the way you sail through it.

We're still a long way from that, but the world it will happen in is finally beginning to appear.